Please don't use the term "Classic" - that's what Apple have named their latest full-sized ipod, and Rockbox doesn't work on that.

You'll need to either find someone with a Windows PC with iTunes installed who will let you convert your ipod to FAT32, or find a Linux PC and manually convert it following the instructions on the this page:

The disk partitioning tools on a Mac don't (as far as I found) allow you to set up the partitions in the way your ipod expects, hence the reason the manual conversion instructions at ipodlinux require Linux.

Or the last option is to hope that someone reading this has the same ipod as you and donates their MBR to the conversion page.

And sorry to have confused you with "Classic". It's what we used to call this model before Steve Jobs reinvented the retronym last year. As a general knee-jerk reaction I'm not inclined to let Steve define my use of the English language, but I take your point in this context.

I have Linux and Windows machines here. And I have a Window machine running iTunes that happens to have a Firewire connector. Is it really just a matter then of either using iTunes on the Windows machine to convert the iPod to FAT32. Or using fdisk on a Linux box to create a couple of partitions? (Actually I don't think I have a Linux machine with Firewire handy. But won't the Mac OSX/BSD fdisk do the trick?)

The easiest way would seem to be to use itunes on the Windows machine to restore your iPod.

By the way, I have renamed this thread (just removed the Classic) as it was a bit confusing. I looked at the thread with the intention of telling you Rockbox doesn't work on the Classics . I appreciate your sentiments (and I agree it is a slightly annoying name they chose), but in this case we have enough people getting confused about the new Classics (!) as it is.

OK, guys. Thanks for the help. I used iTunes on Windows to convert the drive formatting, without any problems.

However, installation of RockBox wasn't a success.

Booting into RockBox hosed the contrast, making the screen all but unreadable. I might have been able to get into the controls to fix this, but RB decided that my battery was too low, and shut down. Then booted again. Then shut down. And so on. I did manage to reboot into Apple iPod mode and use Settings for a more readable screen, but the backlighting was weirdly stripey. The settings were lost when I got back into RB mode, leaving the screen unreadable again. My guess is that RB hasn't been extensively tested on a 1G iPod.

I've regretfully taken RB off the machine and it's back to normal with no ill effects. Turns out the battery is fine, and fully charged. I think I'll return to using Retune, but the venture into RB was easy enough to manage (with the help of you folks here) so I'd be happy to go back to it for further exploration if you have any suggestions about how to fix those contrast and reboot problems.

@yapper Thanks for the tip. I can see hours of harmless amusement wading through those releases to find one that might work. :-) But are there any diagnostic tools to give us a better fix on what might be going wrong? I'm very happy to help, but not crazy about thrashing around in the dark.

@BigBambi That seems to be a fix for a bug that hasn't manifested itself on my machine. The two problems I'm having seem to be:

No, that will copy the entire 5GB disk... You will want to add "count=1" to the end of that line to restrict it to one sector.

You can attach it to a comment in this thread, although you may have to rename it (e.g. to .txt) - the forum probably doesn't accept files with a .bin extension. I'll then arrange for it to be moved to the right place.

2) has now been "fixed" (the shutdown on low battery has been disabled for now). If you download and install a new "current build" of Rockbox, it should no longer reboot constantly (no need to reinstall the bootloader - just unzip the new rockbox.zip over the top of the old one, overwriting all existing files).

Regarding 1), it seems there are slightly different hardware revisions of the 1st gen, meaning that the default contrast is likely to be different.

If you create a text file in the .rockbox directory called "config.cfg" and put the single line "contrast: 40", that will change the contrast. Valid values are between 5 and 63. Once you (hopefully) get a value that means you can see the screen, you can fine-tune it in the settings menus in Rockbox itself.

If you can get it working, then please let us know what the default should be for your ipod, and also go into the "System -> Debug -> View HW Info and tell us what the hardware revision is - it should be either 0x00010000, 0x00010001 or 0x00010002

The dd instruction should be using the "whole disk" device (/dev/disk3) not the 2nd partition on the disk (/dev/disk3s2). The MBR is the very first sector on the disk.

Of course! I'm supposed to know this stuff. Will fix this with another upload.

Somewhat mixed news on the new current build (r16657, revised). RockBox now loads, and appears stable. The display is too pale, but readable. However, I can't get to Settings (or anywhere much ) because the scroll wheel doesn't work. There's a response from the four surrounding buttons and the centre button (the backlight switches on when any of these are pressed), but the scroll wheel isn't being read at all.